2/2/09

Today I was woken by the sounds of Steelers/Cardinals fans watching  Japanese coverage of the Superbowl. Because I wasn't too interested in the game and I had been sleeping on a slab for two nights I decided to walk to the shangdian to pick up a pillow and mattress pad. In retrospect I should have written down the characters/pinyin for these two words.

I marched over to the one way shangdian we visited the other day and made my way downstairs (it's a two story supermarket). An attendant asked me if i needed help finding something (I assume) to which I mimed myself sleeping. She directed me to the bedding section. She chose for me a pillow stuffed with what I can only describe as beans. Hard beans. I politely suggested the softer fluff filled pillow right next to it. She was very focused on the price difference. The bean pillow was 145 kuai and the actual pillow was 168 kuai - a difference of $3. I splurged. With the pillow under my belt I waved my hand behind my back to indicate mattress pad. She showed me a packaged soft ......thing. I just assumed it was a mattress pad so i bought it. It wasn't. It was a duvet..with flowers and the word LOVE all over it. My bed is the ugliest, girliest bed in BeiWai. I just used my standard issue duvet as a mattress pad and adopted my LOVE blanket. It works for now..

The rest of the day was filled with administrative meetings - rules and regulations, safety stuff etc.

In the evening a few of us walked around in search of a temple nearby. We hiked along the 3rd ring road highway stopping  the temple on the banks of a frozen canal. It was closed so we walked around a little more. Further down the road we saw a doorway to a flight of stairs. I'm not sure why we decided to walk down. A more fluent member of our party asked the guard..

...wait. Guards are everywhere in Beijing. Not just guards, but walls. I know China is famous for the great wall... but they love all kinds of walls here. Every building is in it's own little gated compound with at least 2 soviet looking guards at every entrance. But it's not like the gaurds even do anything. You can always just walk right by them. And they always look so cold. AND i don't understand why they need so many walls and fences. The crime rate is so low. anyway....

We asked the guard what was downstairs - he said a flower shop. A dark underground flower shop? Ok...sure. In actuality it was a ballet studio/furniture store/tea shop/flower store with no discernable boundaries between businesses. We were invited to drink a cup of tea with the tea officianado/cleark. After a thorough washing he poured us the tiniest cups of tea. Perhaps a quarter of a shot glass. I think it was one of those really-high-quality-things-have-to-be-enjoyed-in-tiny-amounts things. He seemed extremely particular.

We walked around some more passing a mile long mural devoted to the Olympics. It was an odd mix of paintings. Each 10m long section was painted apparently by someone different. Michaelangelos and kindergarteners.

That's about all for today...